Daily Life in the Shire
by Michi21
Summary: Who needs a magic ring and a bunch of depression when you can live with a bunch of happy hobbits? Part 2: Rosie and Sopha the Hobbits have a happy, peaceful picnic, but they are followed by uninvited guests- and the embarrassment that follows!
1. Default Chapter

Happy daily life in the Shire:  
(Also Known as: Michi2 Cuts Up the Story so she can Place her Insanity There)  
An intro:  
  
Lord of the Rings is very sad in my opinion. I wonder what would happen if Frodo had never gone on the quest... wouldn't it have been nicer and led a "normal" hobbit life?! I want happy endings! Like Sam and Rosie and Bill the Pony living happily ever after! And Fireworks for Hobbit Children! (No, that's not a charity) Give me wild hobbit parties, thick, rich hobbit meals, and laughing hobbit maids dancing the jig! YES! Without further adoo, (That is NOT how you spell it.)..... HAPPY DAILY LIFE IN THE SHIRE!  
  
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Gather round, Hobbit children, and listen and hear... a tale of a bunch of happy, dancing hobbits.  
There was once a beautiful hobbit-maid, whose name was Sopha, fairer than an elf, and she knew how to cook better than any elf ever could. She could cook mushrooms, she could cook potatoes, and carrots and cabbage, too. Okay, okay, she was just an ordinary hobbit. She liked to dance, and was doing so, at the 111th birthday party of Mr. Bilbo Baggins. Bilbo had, of course, absolutely NO surprises planned. He had never even owned a gold ring in his life. And he wasn't planning to. Why, might you ask, is this idiot tearing up the entire tale of the ring? I thought I told you about that in the intro. This is happy, normal, Shire life, and it's interesting enough without magic rings.  
Who needs magic rings when you can have dancing hobbits? And this particular hobbit was just aching to dance with Frodo Baggins, for this was his 33rd birthday, and, (In Sopha's eyes at least) he was getting more handsome by the day. Her dearest friend and longtime gossip partner Rosie told her that there were plenty more handsome hobbits floating around the place, all the while keeping her eyes on Samwise Gamgee, as if nobody else existed. Sopha Brandybuck, (One of Meriadoc's many cousins) however, got fed up with Rosie's dreamlike state and decided to get herself another cherry cordial.  
Plucking one of the flowers from the vase and twisting it in with her curly hobbit hair, Sopha sat down at a table and watched Merry and his pal Pippin trying to get into the fireworks. She was beginning to feel tired, and slightly bored with this party. How come nobody asked her for a dance anyways? She wondered if she should go humor someone and ask Gandalf for a twirl.  
The sporadic 'orchestra' started to play a perky waltz, and Ella Proudfoot started singing. Not bad, thought Sopha. Ella Proudfoot was known throughout the Shire as an 'okay' singer. Now if only one could understand what she was singing.  
Sopha felt someone sitting down beside her. She looked- it was Frodo. Her face reddened, and she craned her neck around to see if Rosie was watching.  
"You don't look like you're dancing," He said. "Enjoying yourself?"  
"Yes, yes, just fine," She said. {Act cute, act cute, act cute...} She was all the while repeating in her mind.  
"Well, can I have a dance, then?" Frodo asked.  
"Please!" She exclaimed suddenly, taking poor Frodo's hand at once, and practically pulling him towards the place where the others were dancing.  
All the while, Rosie and Samwise had been dancing. It looked as if Rosie's grin couldn't get wider at what she'd just caught, and it also looked like poor Sam was about to have a heart attack. He was practically wheezing.  
Ella Proudfoot was starting to go flat. Bilbo Baggins noticed, and smiled to himself. Gandalf came to sit beside him, with a cup of spicy ale, and the two started chatting about normal, hobbit-esque things. I think their conversation had something to do with the price of potatoes and how Gandalf wanted a new set of robes, his were beginning to fade.  
The dance ended, and Sopha, slightly out of breath, got herself a piece of birthday cake and sat down next to Rosie. There was a moment of silence, and then suddenly they both started chattering.  
Then all the sudden, there was a very loud "BOOM!" as one of the tents popped off into the sky. A lot of hobbits started screaming and running, but Sopha just laughed. Rosie gave her a 'You're-insane-and-if-you-value-your-life,-you'd-better-come-and-panic-too" look. Two words solved that one- Merry and Pippin. As a great dragon soared through the air, Rosie and Sopha just kept laughing. It was a firework after all.  
The crowd started to cheer. "Speech! Speech!"  
Bilbo got up on some barrels and began a speech that would last a half hour. Rosie fell asleep on Sopha's arm. Frodo listened to the speech, but couldn't help but think about poor Sam, because he was about ready to pass out. Ella Proudfoot decided that she would not get another chance to show off her voice that night, and so she went home. That was too bad though- the party was only about to get better. 


	2. Flowers

Part Two:  
  
The next day found Sopha and Rosie in the fields, looking for only the prettiest flowers, for doing whatever hobbit girls do with flowers anyways. The day was beautiful, and warm, like a usual September day. The leaves on the trees were just beginning to turn, but the flowers were doing alright, in fact, they seemed determined to cover the fields until the first frost swept over the plains.  
"Elf-ear Lilies, Purple Dragontails, Daisies..." Rosie looked at the bouquet she was gathering, but Sopha's eyes were scouring the countryside. She thought she heard voices.  
"Yie, let us sit down, should we have our lunch yet? It seems like a whole hour ago that we last ate..." Rosie asked, beginning to clear a space for a picnic in the flowers.  
"My goodness, it does seem like a long time. What'd you pack us?" Sopha sat down in the flowers and spread a towel down to be their table.  
"Last night's leftover beef soup, wheat crackers and salmon spread, half a loaf of Sally Halberton's famous banana bread, and Gooseberry tea..."  
"Sounds wonderful. Let's eat." They unpacked their lunch, and as soon as they started eating it, out from the bushes popped three figures- Samwise Gamgee, Pippin Took, and Merry Brandybuck.  
"I told ya's I smelled some food around here!" Said Pippin, looking at the picnic. Turning to the ladies, he asked, "May we join you? It looks like you have enough..."  
It was all Sopha could do to stop from groaning, but Rosie didn't look like she was about to turn Sam away, even if it meant having Merry and Pippin around for lunch. Pippin and Cousin Merry weren't all that bad, after all... if only they didn't eat so much.  
"Well, anyways, I was with Frodo Baggins the other afternoon, and he was telling me how angry his uncle was that they hiked up the price of mushrooms- just in time for his birthday- and-"  
Sam was blabbering on and on, at least in the moments when his mouth wasn't full of food- and Rosie seemed to be absorbing every word of his mindless chatter. Rosie was much taller and thinner than she, and was sometimes a little clumsy, but she had the best manners when eating (in the company of those who weren't close friends) and Sopha was beginning to get very bored, very fast. She decided to excuse herself.  
"I think I'll go for a walk," She declared, at the first moment when Sam stopped to chew some crackers.  
"I'll go with you!" Said Pippin, before she could tell him no, and the next thing she knew they were walking down the hillside together. Merry looked at Sam, who was looking at Rosie.  
"Aww, what a cute couple they'd make, don'cha think? I do hope they marry someday, so jolly ol' Pip could be family! Imagine that!" He said, cutting Sam off in the middle of another sentence about mushrooms. Rosie and Sam didn't quite hear him. If Sopha had heard him at that moment, he'd be slapped all the way to Mordor, but she couldn't hear him.  
By now they were halfway down the road, and they just kept walking, and talking, just like anyone would with their cousin's best friend.  
Sopha hoped that nobody would see her walking with Pippin... she could just imagine the rumors flying... it would be even worse than the time someone caught Martina Whiskbury and Elias Grubb eloping... she could just imagine it... She really hoped nobody would see them.  
"Ah, Frodo! Hey, there, Good old Frodo!" Pippin started yelling when he saw Frodo chopping wood outside Bag End. Things could not get worse. Sopha swerved to the other side of the road, but Frodo was already looking at them. He ran out of the gate to greet them.  
"Sopha, and Pippin! What a pair, and what a day!" He pointed to the blue sky above.  
"Not a pair, no, just friends," Pippin said, much to Sopha's relief. She looked at Frodo with a "Get-me-out-of-this-situation-pleeeeeeeeeeeeeease" type of look. He understood, and invited them in for lunch. They didn't dare say that they'd eaten already.  
"Funny, Pippin, you couldn't get any girl in the Shire, if you tried. Especially not one like Sopha," Frodo was talking to him in the kitchen. Sopha was sitting at the table. Although it didn't look that way, Frodo liked Sopha better than Pippin did. Neither of them expected to end up married to her- her superior cooking skills were famous throughout the shire, and she was expected to age well- Brandybucks had a thing for being well preserved (Without the help of magic rings).  
The doorbell rang- it was Merry. "Rosie and Sam left me," He said.  
"Did you expect anything different?" Asked Frodo, laughing. "What is this, the asylum for people that have left Rosie and Sam to themselves? I see your little 'quest' wasn't entirely fruitless!" He winked at Merry and Pippin. Sopha didn't get it. 


End file.
